>I am writing a program that needs to check for the existence of a particular directory. It then needs to delete everything underneath that direcotry (to include other folders) and the very last step is to delete the directory itself.

You need to include paths here if needed:

lnRetVal = adir(laFiles, "*.*")
for i = 1 to lnRetVal
   lcFile = upper(laFiles[i, 1])
   ClearAttributes(lcFile)
   erase (lcFile)
endfor
rd folder_name

procedure ClearAttributes
lparameter tcFileName
if vartype(tcFileName) <> "C" or empty(tcFileName)
   return .f.
endif
local lcFile, lnRetVal
lcFile = alltrim(tcFileName)
DECLARE SHORT SetFileAttributes IN KERNEL32 ;
   STRING @ lpFileName, ;
   INTEGER dwAttributes
lnRetVal = SetFileAttributes(lcFile, 0) && Remove all attributes
return (lnRetVal > 0)